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Legendary R&B Venues - Part 1

© Barney Quick

The Apollo Theater, New York City – This burlesque palace on 125th Street in Harlem began featuring some jazz in the 1920s. The pace of jazz bookings accelerated under Sid Cohen, who bought ti in 1934 and changed ther name from Hurtig & Seamon’s to The Apollo. When Frank Shiffman bought it two years later, the audiences changed from white to black as well. Wednesday Amateur Night became the trial by fire (Apollo audiences were forthright about their assessments of amateur performances) that launched the careers of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine. After World War II, jump blues was well represented at the Apollo with frequent appearances by Johnny Otis, Joe Liggins, Amos Milburn, Wynonie Harris and the like. The Apollo is the place where James Brown chose to record a series of shows in 1962, so as to give record buyers a taste of his stage act. King’s Syd Nathan balked at the idea of a live Brown album, but the result’s phenomenal sales changed his mind. Berry Gordy, Jr. knew his Motown machine had arrived when a revue of his artists played the Apollo. It was simply the pinnacle of twentieth-century black entertainment.

The Cotton Club, Cincinnati – It seems that every city had a black nightclub bearing this moniker. In the case of the Queen City, The Cotton Club was to be found inside The Sterling Hotel, at the corner of Sixth and Mound. It’s here that Syd Nathan found trumpeter Henry Glover working in Jimmy Lunceford’s orchestra and snatched him away to be the King label’s first a&r man. Bands that had residencies there in the early fifties included those of Cincinnati-based singer-drummer Tiny Bradshaw, Detroit pianist Todd Rhodes and Indianapolis saxophonist Jimmy Coe, whose outfit featured pianist-vocalist Flo Garvin. (All these units recorded for King.)

The Fillmore, San Francisco – This structure started life as The Majestic, a dance hall and dancing school in 1912. It was a roller rink in the 1940s. In 1952, Charles Sullivan began booking r&b shows into The Fillmore, including the revues of Johnny Otis (at whose gig he was approached by The Peaches, thus launching Etta James’ career) and Bobby Bland and Ike & Tina Turner (whose guitarist at the time of their early-sixties Fillmore show was an undiscovered journeyman named Jimi Hendrix). In 1965, local arts promoter Bill Graham took over operations and began booking local hippie bands, eventually leading to the auditorium’s reputation as a progressive-rock shrine.